Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Studies
have shown that the well-being of marriage and the family carries large
consequences for children and for the economy, but the Heritage
Foundation’s Jennifer Marshall offered an additional warning when she
cautioned, “If we want a limited government … conservatives need to
stand for the family.” Marshall’s statement draws on the idea that the
family, as the basic unit of society, is also a bulwark against big
government. If the family, extended and immediate, is failing in its
fundamental duty to lead members to care for one another, the government
will step in to fill that vacuum. Subsequently, as the state grows in
power and increasingly provides for citizens’ material needs, the need
for the family is diminished.

Writing in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw the danger of weakening family ties in democratic societies when he wrote:

In [the past] man almost always knows about his ancestors
and respects them; his imagination extends to his great-grandchildren
and he loves them…in democratic ages on the contrary, the duties of each
to all are much clearer but devoted service to any individual much
rarer. The bonds of human affection are wider but more relaxed…they form
the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation

For generations, raising a family was a community venture with young
families rallying together for support and family members pitching in to
help with new children. The extended family was the bedrock, and was
the first source one looked to when in need, whether for a loan to
purchase a new home or merely for someone to watch the children for an
evening. Boys and girls learned generosity and duty at the knee of the
generations who raised them, and it was within this thriving sense of
community where virtues of civil society were first instilled into
children. Unfortunately, the highly individualistic tendencies of
democracy that Tocqueville warned of have taken firm hold in the past
several decades, and the importance of the extended family has thus been
significantly de-emphasized. Since the Industrial Revolution, and most especially in the Northeast,
young men and women move away from home towards the city in large
numbers, determined to earn their independence and make their way. Once
they’ve done so, they often settle down to raise their families far
removed from their own parents, grandparents, and ancestral roots,
resulting in the rise of the nuclear family structure over a multigenerational one. (Read more.)

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